If I could have outsourced it to India for a couple of hundred rupees I would have, but my contract states I can't "sublicense", which is bad news for both Deepak in Delhi and me.

I was trying to juggle work and the squillionth week of school holidays. My youngest had watched the entire series of My Crazy Obsession featuring some nutcase bloke who wears a mermaid tail and another who likes to pretend he's a baby, so for both our sakes I booked her in for a "Sew Your Own Sea Creature" workshop. It promised five hours of creativity, use of fine motor skills and a new stuffed toy to sit alongside the 87 others.

What I didn't know when I handed over $70 was that I was also making a down-payment on 36 hours of gold-star guilt. Because when I picked up my 10-year-old and her stuffed pink seahorse with its blue button eyes, the sewing teacher sidled over.

"She did really well," she remarked in the telltale tones of the practised passive-aggressive, "considering she's never sewed before."

I fell for it. Of course I did. I have an oversized handbag specifically for the overflow of mother guilt. "But, but," I protested, "we once did blanket stitch on an Oxfam doll (actually it was her elder sister) and she's knitted with her Nana (again, elder sister)."

You'd think a decade into this parenting caper I'd dismiss such nonsense, wave a nonchalant hand at the needle Nazi and quip: "What do you expect from a mother who Sellotapes up the hems on school uniforms?"

But, no, I sloped home, cleaned out the craft box and panic-shopped some stitch-your-own Easter egg cosies from Lincraft online. Then I wrote a term plan which consisted of one sporting, one cultural, one musical and one service activity for each of the kids (they're thrilled about the soup kitchen).

Finally, as I came over all kindy teacher and insisted we count to 10 together in French and Japanese, the 13-year-old burst out laughing. "Hey, Mum, I don't think we're going to be failures in life because we can't sew. Look at you."

Oh, I'm an idiot. I worked out years ago what kids need and it's not a perfectly polished compendium of talents and complementary after-school activities. They don't even really need a full deck of life skills - although proficiency with cutlery, soap and the word "thank you" is generally advisable.

Rather, what you should heap on them - other than love - is humour. Great big belly laughs of it. Tickles, silly walks, cream moustaches, bum paintings (exactly as it sounds) and long sessions on the sofa with Ogden Nash, David Walliams and Roald Dahl. Because as the latter once observed: "A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants, and deserves, is a parent who is SPARKY."

But we're losing our spark, our ease, our humour, on the bandwagon of busyness. We focus on what our kids can do, not who they are, and we trade in those precious hours of messing about to force them up the totem pole of success and self-improvement.

Yet it's a good laugh, an ability to amuse themselves and others, an appreciation of the absurd, that'll see them through life's obstacles. Gratitude, mindfulness, being present - each has become an industry. But few talk about fun and playfulness, about the unmitigated joy of being a kid with your kid.Some parents just get it. David Beckham always seems to be having a crack with his children and I suspect Vic does too when she loses the stilettos and shades. The Jackmans clearly do playful, as do Joel Madden and Nicole Richie. But Suri Cruise? Perhaps she and Tom have mud fights? And you have to hope Liz Hurley occasionally lets Damien out of his junior banker garb.

I'm not genetically blessed with a GSOH - beware anyone who boasts one - but you can learn to lighten up. When I feel the tension rising I tickle my kids, which recently led to one of them giving me a bleeding nose. My friend Sarah has taken to wearing industrial earmuffs when her sons' bickering gets too much - "what, what, I can't hear you!"

Recently, when our youngest was trapped in a spiral of whingeing, my husband picked her up fully clothed and jumped in the pool with her. I can't count the number of tetchy mealtimes I've seen off with green eggs and ham (stir pesto through scrambled eggs). And the best response for reluctant teeth cleaners: "Right, I'll brush your ears then."

Humour diffuses. It kicks sand in the face of high expectations, stress, toddler belligerence and teen angst. Criticism is always better when shot through with comedy.

But above all, you being funny makes them funny.

"So what's his name then?" I asked my daughter as she proudly showed me her seahorse sewn together with higgledy-piggledy stitches.

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